It's dirt. Just dirt. Nothing sacred about it. Or rather, no more than any other patch of dirt... This entire planet is sacred, yet you'd be hard pressed to see it with the current state of things. In the paraphrased words of Rafael Jesus Gonzales, we fucked Eden up, then had the gall to go sully the Heavens, as if there weren't enough ruin down here already... This whole planet is sacred, but at present it's sick with this plague called us, eating it hollow, sewing our rot, and in short, fucking this bitch up. That patch of "promised land" sand and gravel is no more deserving of our stewardship than some 4x4 cut of gardenslice in the folds of a dying Detroit, or any vacant lot rotting in the wastelands of West Oakland, and more, it's certainly no valid reason to kill people. I can accept the argument that human life is more "sacred" or "sacrosanct" than life in the lower echelons of the food chain hierarchy, simply because I was born on "Team People", and my empathy for my own wins out over my empathy for other varieties of life. I can also accept the argument that human beings are a parasitic viral problem attacking this pebble, and that we need to run our course sooner than later if the Earth is ever to have a decent shot at recovery. No need to explain that further; I hold that argument to be self evident. What I won't accept, what I can't accept, is any argument that posits one people as superior, more worthy, or more deserving of life and basic rights than another, or any "rights" for that matter, nor can I accept any argument that asserts any patch of Earth you can cut out this sphere as being any holier or more sacred than another, especially when said argument is used to justify hatred, military force, murder, and genocide. That being said, I do believe this Earth remembers its past in ways we don't fully understand, and that places are as diverse as people in that they are set apart by their histories and experiences, and the memories of both they carry forward, in their fabric, their intangibles, their being. Yet in terms of worth, spiritual or otherwise, this world is ubiquitously uniform, as are we. Fuck your religion, fuck your morals, fuck your memories, and fuck your world view if any are causing you to act otherwise.
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"His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay." -Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, Chapter I, page 5 Someone recently asked me what Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian was about. I told them scalpin' injins, which is certainly part of it. But how can a brilliance so broad be summed up with brevity? The person's question prompted me to attempt to sum up what has for a long time been an obsession of mine. I don't think I covered the half of it, but here goes. And note, some of the tone throughout is a bit of an homage to Cormac's prose in the book, which is an homage to previous Melvillean classics, amongst others, and so goes the baton of language and literature. So, what's Blood Meridian about? Well, it is about scalpin’ injins. But also... It’s about the expansion of the old West, using the mid 19th century frontier as a landscape within which we examine the nature of man, mostly as it pertains to our ancient and eternal disposition towards violence and conquest and destruction, wrestling with our brief moment in eternity and the mark upon it we are to leave in our wake. It’s about a kid from Tennessee. It’s about innocence and innocence lost, and another sort of quality not unlike innocence, and whether that intangible can be sheltered from corruption in an all too corrupt time and place. Trace flames in the dead hearts of men nearly so themselves. It’s about the Devil himself, silver tongued fiddler that he is, taking delight in talking men out of their convictions, their religions, walking the world seeking out all manner of relic and artifice, fossils of old world genius and ancient man, only to strike them from time and trace in baptisms by fire, for “things that exist without [his] knowing exist without [his] consent”. It’s about mobs and groups and collectives, and the capacity for the individual to be lost therein. It’s about man’s capacity for ultimate evils, and how certain endeavors inclined towards the darker shades of spirit and soul invite such evils upon ourselves, to use us first as agents, consuming what we will with what we can, and then as fuel, to be consumed upon mortal altars of man and the mud of which we are made and to which we are destined to return and become again. It is an homage at times, but all at once something wholly new, something that has never been, an achievement in language, an achievement in novel. It's my favorite book, written by a master. "A man seeks his destiny and no other... Will or bill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefor some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. This desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone." -Cormac McCarthy via the Judge, Blood Meridian, Chapter XXIII, page 344 Sie müssen shlafen aber Ich muss tanzen : They must sleep but I must dance. It’s the best kind of anything. Think about it. A smile that can’t help itself. Laughter that’s anything but polite. A speech that can’t help but express, some monologue walled behind rib cage, chest, and cartilage that can no longer contain its confession. An attraction that can’t help but dictate one’s actions, be they involving good choices or otherwise. Passion is anything but moderate, far from self contained, near impossible to control, unrestrainable. Anything done in moderation or with self control is either (on the rare occasion) a reflection of an individuals own hard earned discipline and will power or else (more likely and far more often) evidence that the whatever you’re doing is kind of fucking boring. Almost real. Has you almost engaged. It’s almost whatever it is that you’re looking for, but, muthafuck an almost, y’know? It begins something terrible, the sort of wrath-of-God-whip-crack-closed-fist-temple-shatter that sees your grandkids trying to wander their way back from. Then comes the ringing, the hollow song in bone, more white noise than melody. My frame shifts back to scaffolding. The world tries to restep back from its shatter, to find its way back to form. Light comes back first, too fast, all at once, blinding like the bathroom at 3 am. The light, and blood with it. I can taste it. I realize I’m ripping holes in my cheeks as teeth challenge each other. Lock jaw. Flesh caught. Neither side gives. The blood rolls down from my chin, flesh broke to pulp, and then reality snaps back just in time for me to see him swing... again. The second impact hurts all the same, but my body’s ready now. An eye twitch, small, maybe, a sharp pull as my face tries to turn, but otherwise I’m still. In fact, I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
He isn’t hitting me. He never did that I can remember, though people assure me I’m mistaken. He’s hitting my mother. I’ve never met this man before now, this imposter, this mirage of demon thrust and child tongue. He’s a blur, hard to keep in focus, but it all slows down when he swings. And the impact: white hot steel, flames lashed over rock, rock become black, rock turned temple ruin, smolder, panic, retreat. I never see the impact. I never see the fists land. If I do the image is gone before it can calcify, before it can be made into memory, quickly replaced, switched out with snapshots of violence just the same, any impersonal image of bodies torn, of feasts of fire on flesh, anything to cover over the image of my mother, my father, my mother, breaking, broken, flesh to pulp, blood, naked, meat, naked, meat, become meat, my mother, my mom… my mother… my mom… mom ... MOM! ... MAMA! It ends in sweat. Cold. In dreamscapes tortured and scorched. In memories that read more like scrapbook than document. It ends in confusion. Though to be honest, it hasn’t ended yet, so I’m guessing, projecting, I'm hoping and praying, but I don’t really know. I can’t really know. All I can know is how it won’t end, and I promise you now, it won’t end like it started. Just as one can trace a life from death back to birth such that every event contained therein would seem dependent on the previous and contributing to the next, as though if any one event were removed or altered said life would come to a similarly altered or altogether different end, one can trace the history of the world and things greater still back through time, through the myriad residents of today, both modern and unchanged ancient, native and mixed and old world pure, and further still into the very elements and the clash of elements from which those elements sprang, until the history of existence itself is tabernacled in a chain of causes and effects, in a series of stories leading back from today through to ancestral arrivals on shores still much the same as now though then framing continents much changed in their course forwards and back again, back to atavistic beginnings forgotten for lack of witness and document, back to primal birthings of tides and talc and life, and back to the void from which said life sprang… back, back, back. In doing so, when histories are rendered in this way and viewed through such retrospection, they can appear deliberate, intended, illustrated perfectly in the progression of evolution and the illusion of an intelligent design that it projects, the products of which (evolution and history both) appearing as though engineered and designed with intelligence and conscious thought given to the ultimate purpose the things were intended to serve, when these products are instead simply possibilities become concrete, one among many becoming one alone, things produced by crossing each hurdle as they come, things forged by sharpening themselves against themselves and against a world pitted to unmake them, things that have become what they were to be because that was all they could be, things built to sustain themselves, their only purpose, until that purpose becomes not enough, and then no more, and those things with it.
Here in the states we put so much emphasis on those left behind, by which I mean those left shattered in the wake of tragedy, their lives collapsing around the hole that was their daughter, or their son. We assert their right to closure as obvious, as something which they are owed and promised by some misplaced sense of decency we impose on the world around us. But such decency is false, as is the promise that comes with it. The world owes us nothing. Our lives are drawn on borrowed time.
Perhaps not here, or at least, not enough to shape the way we conceptualize the aftermath of tragedy, but certainly elsewhere, in hovels of the world too meager to earn our attention, such fallacies are made all too clear. The unfulfilled promise of justice as it pertains to Latin America and the ubiquitous acts of tragedy that plague the continent is something we cannot imagine. We know nothing of the disappeared. Nothing of the dirty wars, or the mass graves of anonymous remains, femurs not matching the fibulas next to them. We are all too lucky, entitled, unquestionably certain of the justice we’re due, and all the more certain of the world’s duty to give it to us. But painting Latin America as a land of despair is far from accurate, nor is it anywhere near my intention. In fact, if I was confined to general terms I would characterize Latin America as the opposite. As a land of hope, and resilience, in the face of things we would bow before in defeat. We cry end times whenever the economy dips below our comfort level; they assert a brighter tomorrow in the face of crushing uncertainty, a people unafraid to dream beyond the nightmare they’re too often wrangled within. And considering the gross infiltration of Christian imagery and ideals across the continent they have every reason to see the four horseman in the dictatorships, neoliberal economic enslavement, environmental racism, and pervasive misogynistic practices that have come with the conflation of worlds, of ideas, with the miscegenation of people and of culture that is the history of Latin America. But they do not. Have not for 500 years. The fact that a sense of hope is dominant when by all accounts a sense of despair seems justified and even appropriate is testimony to this resilience of soul. Of spirit. And of people. The world owes us nothing, but we owe ourselves much. We owe each other more. And looking South, we still have much to learn on the matter. I don’t place any higher value on an American life than I do an Iraqi life, they’re human lives, one and the same. I don’t think being biased in favor of our country will ever amount to anything positive for the world. That being said, I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m biased against our country either. I think at one time I may have been, but more often am mistaken as such for my willingness to speak out in favor of they who wear the face of the “enemy”. I say that to say this: What happened 12 years ago was terrible, a tragedy so immense in its scope and unfamiliar in our cultural landscape and collective memories that we still wrestle to make sense of it today. But when I reflect on the amount of innocent lives lost the world over as a direct result of our military reactions, and then overactions, I can’t help but think they deserve their day too.
“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” ~ Jessica Dovey “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”— Martin Luther King, Jr Racism will not be overcome today, nor tomorrow, for the dehumanization of an individual is coded within them, until it becomes them, and travels down from them to the generations that follow. The same can be said for they who dehumanize others, in reference to the attitudes they must cultivate in order to be capable of such callous action, and the long reach of those attitudes as they extend down our family lines. Rot sewn today lasts lifetimes. We move forward to the same backwards times. We are the oblong circle, ever returning to the beginning, far from perfect, a distorted continuity. And we travel the cycle with no idea as to the path.
Go to the club, and peep what they’re playin. It isn’t what it should be, but learn it anyways. Study it until any knowledge you might have kicked is replaced by immediate and spontaneous urges to bling bling, drop it like its hot, and make it rain. Learn the music until your vocal chords become auto tuned synthesizer’s, until your voice slows to a syruped drawl and every few words you say have their suffix replaced by all manners of -eezy’s and –izzle’s. When your thoughts slow to 80 bpm and you can no longer recall anything you learned before high school, you will know that you are ready to rap.
Next, sign up for youtube, or twitter, or at the very least myspace because the internet is the fastest way to the streets these days. Go on hiphop.com message boards and see what the real thugs think. Make your first single about how the paparazzi won’t leave you alone, or how when you go to the club you buy the bar, and film the video for it at your school where your buzz is strongest. Ask that cute girl from your Womens Studies class to play the video whore. Have that kid from last year’s Economics of Poverty class park his benz near the sidewalk and lean against it like you’re the owner. Don’t use any words you might have learned in college, and speak in any way that isn’t natural to you. If you’re from the Bay, speak like you’re from the South. If you’re from the South, speak like you’re from the Bay. Never speak like you’re from New York unless you’re OK with being underground. Include gimmicks local to your area (see: stunner shades, thizz face, and hyphy movement) and go spend all your money at the club that night because the shit is sure to be a radio classic soon. When you start doing shows, tell the crowd to peep you’re freestyles and recite those verses you wrote freshmen year. Make your eyes move around to imply that you’re deep in thought and surely coming off the top of the head. Attend radio shows and recite your writtens but have the DJ say it’s a freestyle. Learn a bunch of adlibs about money, forget that you’re people don’t have any, and spend at least as much as you make on your self. It’s not important what you buy. Strive to understand nothing. Don’t read your record deal. Smoke weed and pop pills and get sponsored by company’s that kill people. Buy diamonds from Sierra Leone and pat yourself on the back for giving your business to the starving kids in Africa. Don’t ever go to Africa. Rap about Africa, make your second album cover Red Black and Green and ask your publicist to remake you conscious. Spit common knowledge but dress like Common does. Buy more kangols. Use your new image to do Gap commercials and see nothing wrong with the contradiction. When internet buzz turns against you and this latest gimmick comes under fire, catch a gun charge or a drug habit or just claim you’re now too ahead of your time to be understood. Remember, you must die by age 26 to be great, and if you want to be remembered die no later then 40. Rap about the government following you daily because the knowledge you drop is threatening their empire. Only ever rap about dropping knowledge; do not, under any circumstances, ever drop any. This is very important. Every time you drop an album spend less time writing and more money on production. Hire ghost writers by your third release. Rent out illusions of wealth and say fuck my credit and my kids. Ride the trends of the time. Make sure your only conviction is money over bitches, money over mamas, money over everything, and if smart ever does become bankable, remember, you must unlearn everything that has gotten you into the game up to that point, and quickly jump on the dick of intelligence. I think writers often exist in worlds that do not simply because they feel the world as is does not suit them, or else cannot contain them, and so they find solace in an imagined reality that can.
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AuthorRhymer of words. Speaker of sounds. Ancestral conduit. And cool as shit. Archives
March 2015
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